


The Big Question

by randomling



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1017166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomling/pseuds/randomling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Carlos investigates Cecil's hatred of Steve Carlsberg, the results are not what he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Big Question

**Author's Note:**

  * For [moriann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moriann/gifts).



Josie looks left and right before closing the front door of her house behind Carlos. A few seconds later, he follows her into her kitchen. Josie’s house is warm and it always has a bright, calm feel to it. Much like Josie herself. Carlos doesn’t believe in angels, but in a house like this, he almost could.

“So,” Carlos says, but Josie shushes him and waves him to sit at the kitchen table. She picks up a tray laden with tea and cake, and Carlos, halfway sat down, springs up again. “Let me help you with that,” he says. Josie lets him take the tray and set it carefully on the table, then takes a seat opposite him.

She’s in her late sixties, Carlos would guess, but he can’t bring himself to stick the “Old Woman” in front of her name - she’s barely older than his mother. He’s itching to bring up the subject that he came here to discuss, but he buttons his lip. Table manners first. Josie pours the tea with a slow, shaky hand, and cuts Carlos a generous slice of cake.

When they’re both served, Carlos digs into the cake with the side of his fork and tastes it. It’s ginger, and it’s good. Well, of course. Josie regularly brings baked goods to the lab, and Carlos is mildly anxious that they are having a detrimental effect on his supposedly-perfect figure.

“You asked me about Cecil and Steve,” Josie says after she has sipped a mouthful of tea.

“Yeah. I don’t get why you couldn’t tell me at the bowling alley.” Carlos sips at his tea, which is a little too strong. “Is it forbidden knowledge?” he says, and he puts a little inflection on those last two words, because honestly, this _town._

“Don’t mock what you don’t understand,” Josie says sharply.

She holds Carlos’s gaze for a long moment, until he looks down, chastened. “Sorry.”

“It’s sensitive,” she said. “And of course we’re protected here.”

“Of course,” Carlos says, and this time he manages to keep his tone in check. “So what happened between them? Are they - did they used to have a thing?” This is the question he really wants the answer to, the one that niggles at the back of his mind every time he hears Cecil say Steve Carlsberg’s name on the radio. Is he looking at his future?

Josie laughs. “Oh, Lord, no!” she says. “No. It all started about five years ago, I suppose. It was just after the bloodstone disaster - do you know about that?” Carlos shook his head. “Oh, well, that was a terrible time. All the bloodstones just melted overnight! No one could do the usual rituals until a new shipment of bloodstones came through, and that took _weeks_. The City Council got very agitated, and everyone was very scared. This happened right after that.”

*

A year and a half ago - hell, even a _year_ ago, before he got accustomed to Night Vale and its general weirdness - Carlos would have dismissed Josie’s story as outlandish. Unbelievable, even. Now, he listens attentively, and the torrent of questions that occur to him barely even registers. Number one on the list, of course, is _how is that possible?_ But by now he knows that question won’t ever be answered.

The story itself is pretty complicated, even by Night Vale standards. It starts with a plate of muffins and a rumour about a giant cat stalking the streets of Old Town. It ends with an edict from the City Council and - Josie relates this last in a low voice, as if even the protection of the angels might be insufficient - the first of many re-education sessions for Cecil. In between… well. There are red-eyed citizens, some of them kids, accosting people in the street to ask them about their long-distance provider. Rumblings about something unnameable living in the high school. An encounter with a librarian.

Carlos wonders if he shouldn’t write this all down. You know, for posterity.

He drinks four cups of Josie’s slightly-too-strong tea and is persuaded to have a second slice of cake, too. By the end of the story, he’s still not sure of the exact _reason_ Cecil hates Steve so much, so he sets down his teacup and asks the question.

“Oh, my dear,” Josie says, smiling her crinkly-eyed smile. “Because of the muffins, of course. Cecil tells me those muffins were _terrible._ “

Carlos raises his eyebrows and says nothing more.

*

The next person he asks is Teddy Williams. Teddy gives him a long, hard look and says, “Why you wanna know?” He turns away when Carlos falters, going back to wiping down the counter. He makes soothing noises as he caresses it, as if petting a cat, and Carlos shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Some things, he’s never going to get used to.

“Well, we’re dating,” Carlos says. “Me and Cecil.” He feels stupid adding that, because there is no one in the town who doesn’t know. Carlos sometimes wonders whether there’s a law somewhere that makes listening to the radio mandatory; he’s never met anyone who doesn’t listen. “And I guess I - “

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He guesses what? That he wants to know what could cause Cecil to hate someone so much? That he wants to avoid making whatever mistake it was that Steve Carlsberg made?

He can hear Cecil’s tone as he pronounces that name, the way he almost _growls_ , in his mind, every time someone mentions it.

“So why don’tcha ask him yourself?” Teddy asks gruffly, looking up from the counter. Carlos doesn’t have a good answer. Teddy turns back to the counter and runs the cloth over it gently, lovingly. “There. There, now,” he says. “Isn’t that better? Is that a little better?”

*

After that, Carlos takes his beer and goes to watch Cecil, who’s bowling with Josie and Intern Willis on Lane 8. It’s not until a couple of hours later, when he’s on his way to take a leak, that Teddy catches his attention with a harshly-whispered, “Psssst!”

It’s like an old spy movie from the 60s. A bad one. Carlos turns his head; Teddy is beckoning him from behind a pillar. Carlos looks around suspiciously and joins Teddy in a dark corner where they can’t be seen by anyone. Teddy turns away immediately, and Carlos follows him until they are sitting in the bloodstone circle out back of the bowling alley.

“You know why we can’t talk about this in public, right?” Teddy asks, and then adds, “Good,” when Carlos doesn’t respond. No, he thinks, he has no idea why. “Well, it’s kind of a funny story, actually.”

Teddy’s story is even more complicated than Josie’s - and not similar in a single detail. This one involves a strange mist appearing at the radio station, a fist-fight in the parking lot of the Arby’s, and a series of mysterious deaths that went entirely uninvestigated by the Sheriff’s Secret Police. As with Josie, Carlos has to ask Teddy at the end of the story why on earth it led Cecil to hate Steve so much.

“Because Steve made the mist appear,” Teddy says in the low, conspiratorial tone in which he told the whole story. “Or at least that’s what everyone thinks. _I_ think it was Pamela. This was before she was Mayor, of course.”

“Of course,” Carlos says, bewildered.

He goes back inside after that, takes his leak, and returns to Lane 8, where Josie is celebrating her fifteenth strike of the evening. “What took you so long, honey?” Cecil asks. “Did the bathroom get stuck inside a labyrinth again?”

“Yeah,” Carlos says absently. Cecil pats Carlos on the arm and goes to take his shot.

*

The next day, he drives out to the sand wastes to take some readings. It’s on his way back to the car that he sees Telly, the barber who gave him that haircut his first month in town, and it occurs to him that maybe Telly will know the story. Or a different story. Maybe the real story is obscured, and everyone has different memories.

Dammit, even his own mind is starting to sound like a science fiction novel.

He doesn’t get as far as asking the question, because he gets out a single syllable - “Hey” - and Telly looks up with a look of pure panic on his face. Carlos is about to say that it’s okay, but Telly turns and runs, leaving the cactus he was trimming looking kind of lopsided.

It’s incredibly hot, and Carlos has been working all morning, measuring the temperature, density and radioactivity of the sand. They’re all higher than they should be, and Carlos is tired and needs something to eat. Sighing, he turns back in the direction of his car.

*

That night, Cecil comes over right after his radio show. It’s not until after dinner, when they’re curled up on the couch in front of a TV show that Carlos isn’t familiar with, that he gets up the courage to ask the question. “Cecil,” he asks. “Why do you hate Steve Carlsberg so much?”

Cecil lifts his head from Carlos’s shoulder. His expression is puzzled. “Huh. Do you know,” he says after a moment, “I don’t remember?”


End file.
